


Whatever life you wear

by gloss



Series: Ways to be Quiet [2]
Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: M/M, Robin needs a Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-25
Updated: 2006-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:59:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Something always takes the place/Of missing pieces."</p><p>Spoilers/Timeline: Post-"War Games", pre-"Insiders/Outsiders". See notes for more detail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever life you wear

**Author's Note:**

> [Title reference](poetry-references.html#cummings-gladandyoung)
> 
> Spoilers/Timeline: Post-"War Games", pre-"Insiders/Outsiders". GOTHAM CENTRAL's "Dead Robin" arc has been moved to occur before I/O and Nightwing's activities here depend on OUTSIDERS canon (c.#20), rather than that of his own title. Summary from Beck, "Missing". Many thanks to Te for the music and nudge, and to G. for brainstorming and encouragement.

* 

Imperfect knowledge encourages magical thinking. Without the full array of facts and conditions, logic can slip loose, go feral. 

It would be *neat*, for instance, if Dana actually had been a wicked stepmother. Out of the Black Forest, via the Grimms. A bad fairy who stole Tim's grieving heart. Replaced it with a stone. 

That story would explain -- quite a bit, actually. Both poetically and viscerally, such a story could simultaneously account for Dana's (disproportionate) reaction and Tim's own --. 

Call it solitude, now. 

* 

Admittedly, this is a fairly *crowded* solitude. Both in Blüdhaven and -- elsewhere. 

"Wanna go to the movies with Kon and Cassie? Vic already said it's okay, so long as we've got our comms --" Bart holds his up and snaps the elastic around his wrist. "I put mine on this so I can't lose it and you always have yours, so that's not a problem and --. Wanna go? Like a date?" 

Tim glances at his laptop. "I've got a lot of work." 

"It's the *weekend*," Bart says. "Weekends are for Titans. Not Batman." 

Since Tim is forbidden from explaining that Kon's genetic make-up *is* Titans business, he rubs his eyebrow and says, "I can't, Bart. Sorry." 

"It'll be *fun*. We don't have to -- like, dress up or anything. Not that kind of date. Just go to the movies and eat and you *like* movies, you've got some amazing DVDs --" 

"A double-date," Tim says carefully. 

"And I've got enough money, if that's the problem, I don't have much to spend it --. What? Yeah, a double-date. *Oh*." He covers his mouth with both hands as he sinks down to the bed. "That's it, huh?" 

"No." 

"It's because Kon and Cassie are coming and you're okay with --" Bart does his hurry-up tumbleweeds gesture. "Just me and you but going with them would be -- what? Too weird?" 

"No," Tim says. Again. 

Bart's hands are still spinning around each other, blurring out. "Because of *me*. And how you feel about Kon. Going out together, seeing him with Cassie, I can see how that'd be --" 

"Bart. No." Tim closes his laptop and rubs the back of his neck. 

Bart looks up from picking the scab on his knee. "It's okay." 

"What is?" 

"It's okay. I understand." 

Tim rubs the knot in his right tricep. "I...don't." 

"I mean, I always kind of thought, maybe hoped in a totally *un*-Freudian way, that the two of you would -- you would --" Bart shakes his head. "*You know*." 

He falls silent and Tim attempts to decide which trail of logical breadcrumbs to follow. "About me and --?" Cassie? Kon? 

"It's really okay!" Bart's in the doorway as Tim blinks. "I'll tell Cassie I'm sick." 

He is gone before Tim can speak. Which is just as well, since -- he's almost completely uncertain what to say. If anything. 

The door bangs closed as Bart returns. "Back," he announces, as unnecessarily as ever. "So, do you really have stuff to do? Because if you do, I can be quiet. Read or something, let me go get a --" 

This time, Tim manages to catch Bart's hand. "Don't." 

Cocking his head, Bart laces their fingers together. "Don't what?" 

"I --" Tim tugs on Bart's hand until they're chest to chest. "I don't know." 

"Okay," Bart says. "Can I sit down, then?" 

"Please." 

"Cool." Bart wriggles his hand free from Tim's and grins. At first, Tim isn't sure of the grin's provenance, but then Bart kicks backward into a fairly passable walkover, landing square in the center of Tim's bed. "How was that?" 

"Nice," Tim says. He'd only shown Bart the flip once, last weekend at the quarter pipe in Berkeley. "Little wobbly in the middle." 

"Yeah, balance!" Bart shrugs. "Still figuring that out." 

"Ah." 

Making a shooing motion with one hand, Bart kicks the headboard. "Get back to work. You won't even know I'm here." 

Tim assumes he should smile. "That's...a crappy date." 

"Eh." Bart blurs around Tim's bare room, then reappears with a fat textbook on advanced cosmogony in his hand. "Works for me!" 

The book's pages riffle like cheap sound-effects in a high school Halloween haunted house. Here be ghosts, ooh. 

Tim stares at the gene sequences and takes another run at matching Westfield to Kon. It's hopeless, but better than (Luthor) nothing. 

The thing is --. *One* of the many things about...personal relationships that Tim has never quite fully understood is dating. 

He could hardly date *Stephanie* properly. Later, when she knew everything, even then, their dates were still -- on rooftops, in alleys, patrol mixed with --. 

Proximity. 

He couldn't date *her*, couldn't get that much right, and he'd meant to, fully intended to, *wanted* to. 

So this, this situation, is... 

Among other things, this is a train of thought with little likely payoff. 

He sets the sequencing program to filter out Luthor's DNA and checks the bed. 

Bart's curled on his side, reading faster than the speed of sound, his teeth in his lower lip, his chin resting on his bare knee. His baggy shorts are riding up, exposing the back of his thigh, the cords of muscle around bone. 

When Tim slides his hand higher, under the shorts, up his thigh, Bart doesn't move -- let alone jump -- so much as *uncurl*. He unfolds, extends, manages to trap Tim's wrist between his legs and haul him down. 

"Hey, you --" Bart says, the sleepy burr in his voice belied by the grace with which he's opening, pulling, wrapping around Tim. 

"Hi," Tim replies against Bart's chin. "Lie back for me?" 

Bart's eyes widen, then narrow as he grins. "Sure thing." 

Tim does not know, nor does he expect to learn, what Bart's getting out of -- this. Beyond the obvious, that is. The hitch-catch in Bart's breathing, the rapid *grind* he answers against Tim's hip with one of his own, the hard, bony grip of Bart's hands on his shoulders when Tim kisses him. 

Beyond the obvious, in terms of care and kindness -- well. Tim can just try to do his best. 

* 

Tim is trying, really. He's trying very hard, and that has to count for -- something. 

If virtue *had* a calculus, then this effort would, certainly, count. 

But if there were such a calculus, Tim would not be *here*. 

Blüdhaven would still be that place he visited occasionally when Dick became (too needy) insistent. He would not be living here, this would not be, technically, home. Because Stephanie would still be (alive) Robin and his father would still be (in the way) alive. 

So the fact remains that his effort is for naught. His effort is, moreover, rather too diffuse to be anything but a gesture. Refined and repeated, certainly, but that's --. Doing the same thing over and over, while expecting different results. Insanity. 

Still, however. The effort is there, the calm and paling knuckles, as he cleans the apartment after Bart's latest visit. 

"Really, Master Timothy, I remain more than capable with a broom and dustcloth": Alfred would not-smile while saying that, let the amusement filter through his dry tone and shoo Tim gently back to...work. 

Alfred is a professional. No professional should have to face the sheer *havoc* that has been wreaked by a single adolescent speedster in the course of just under sixteen hours. 

There is lemon sherbet in the *blinds*. Books open, their pages rustling in the slight breeze, and face-down, left behind as soon as Bart's attention wandered. A banana peel is draped over the top of the widest bookshelf, far out of either Tim's or Bart's reach. An apple core is tucked under the corner of the kilim rug like a dolly put carefully to bed. 

Nearly half a ream of paper is scattered throughout the room, dark with Bart's careless scrawl and *very* talented caricatures. A pair of red boxer-briefs, curled in on themselves in the rush to get tugged off, makes a clumsy *S* in the center of the hallway. 

Tim briefly considers soaking the place with bleach, then torching it for the insurance. 

"You've got like seventeen different shampoos!" Bart's wet, bare feet squeak on the floorboards. Tim has a moment to *smell* every single one of those shampoos just before he has to contend with the moist, warm *wind* that is Bart barreling into him, naked and shining with water, dragging him into the bedroom. Bart twists -- it could be a jeté -- and bounces onto the bed that Tim just made. "Why do you have so many? Is that a gay thing that I should know about? I've got, um. One. White Rain or something, Joan buys it, and it does a pretty good job, but maybe I should think about --" 

Bart's hair is silky-squeaky between Tim's fingers when Tim plants his knee on the edge of the bed and leans to touch. "Don't." 

"Don't what?" Bart wiggles before leaning back slightly, his shoulders hunching, abdomen wrinkling. A damp sheen runs blotchily across his pecs, down -- yes. Tim traces the warmth of the water down Bart's curving spine. Bart's mouth opens in the *O* that will never *not* make Tim see Impulse, despite the loss of most of his baby-fat and the gradual emergence of sharper bones, sharper features. "Oh!" 

"Don't change your --" Tim presses his mouth against Bart's neck, just below his ear, then slides it back to his hairline. "Shampoo." 

"Oh! Okay, I was just wondering, I mean it seems a little weird, really weird, because you know who has tons of shampoo and stuff? Girls! Greta. And Cissie, too. Cassie, not so much, but she's got a couple, and --" 

"Bart?" 

"Yes?" 

"How do you know that?" 

Bart blinks rapidly for what Tim estimates to be roughly an hour of subjective time. "Know...? Oh, what shampoos they have? Because I explore and stuff. When I get bored, if somebody's, you know --" 

"Taking a breath?" 

"Jerk." Bart punches Tim, lightly, in the hollow of his throat. That's not a move he would have even considered before. Before San Francisco. "*On the phone* or whatever. I like to keep busy, so --" 

"You explore." 

"Yes!" 

"And remember?" 

Bart nods vigorously, and the water in his hair sprays Tim's face and neck. Tim tilts his face back, like a picture of someone taking in the sun or enjoying a sudden spring shower, and --. Succeeds. In enjoying it. 

"Hee. I got you *wet* --" Bart reaches for him, pulling Tim down, licking the water off his face. He plucks at Tim's t-shirt. "-- get this *off*, I want --" 

It's all too easy to tighten his hands on Bart's sharp little hips and roll his groin forward. To be worthwhile, effort must become second-nature. Has become so, and it's worth it, as Bart's eyes widen and he pulls harder on Tim's shirt. 

"What do you want?" Tim asks. His hands are nearly the precise width, top to bottom, of Bart's ribs. His thumbs work tick-tock back and forth over Bart's nipples, soft skin drawing tight, nubbly. He stops when Bart starts breathing through open mouth, when his eyelids drop and his lashes paint his cheek. "Bart." 

"Duh," Bart says, struggling to breathe regularly. He yanks once more, viciously, at Tim's shirt. "You. And --" 

"Tell me the brands." Rolling back onto both feet, Tim pushes Bart back, then crosses his arms to take off his shirt. "Of their shampoos," he adds through the thin fabric, then pulls it the rest of the way off his head. 

"Why?" 

Tim places his right hand clearly -- *obviously* -- over the button his fly. He waits until Bart focuses there. "Because I'm curious." 

"About the *girls*?" Bart shakes his head again, droplets flying, and he's grinning. "Kinky!" 

"About you." Tim hooks his thumb under the button. He's sure that Bart is watching. The certainty heats the bones of his hand. "Your powers of --" 

"Observation? Oh, okay." Rubbing his hands up and down Tim's arms, Bart nibbles on his lip for a few moments, his lashes fluttering as his eyes track back and forth. Like he's in REM sleep, but he's --. Remembering. "Got it! Okay, Greta first, I saw her a couple weeks ago --" 

Tim didn't know that. He should have. 

"L'Oreal Vive for color-treated hair, something like Blondissimo, Blondissima, Suave Aloe and Honey, ReGen Balsam..." Every brand name makes Bart *tremble* as Tim touches his chest. He taps each rib in time with the brands, going lower, until his palm is pressed against Bart's stomach and it's fluttering against his skin. As his other hand pulls down the zipper on his fly and Bart peeks through his bangs at its progress. "...Jean-Marc Beauté, Rexall store-brand dandruff treatment, and. That's it!" 

Tim rocks his hips and Bart's hands are *right* there, pulling down his pants, until he's naked save for the briefs and Bart's pressed up against him, kissing him. 

It has never been easy to stop kissing Bart. Especially not now, as Bart pushes against him and Tim re-learns the difference between the damp of showered skin and *aroused* skin, between the droplets gathering at the hollow in the small of Bart's back and stickier, insistent slick head of his cock rubbing Tim's belly. Bart shifts and sighs, moves his hands around in a complicated geometry of comfort and tease, bites down on Tim's upper lip and squeaks against Tim's teeth. 

It's no effort at all to pinch the sharp jut of Bart's shoulder-blades and bite him *back*, hard enough, holding long enough, that Bart trembles. Moans against Tim's tongue and jerks against the hold. 

"God, please, please -- *Tim* --" Excited, Bart slips halfway into speedspeak, his voice going even higher than usual. Tim squeezes his hips and holds on, pressing his teeth together, as Bart's hands fumble with the elastic on his briefs. "Tim. I --." He shakes his head, making his eyes streak golden across Tim's line of sight. "I. Want you, *now*." 

"You --" Learn fast. Very fast. Tim opens his mouth, tips Bart backward, holding Bart's wrists against the mattress. "Yeah." 

Bart shivers against the hold, his ribs standing out, his pelvis rocking up and up as his legs open and then close around Tim's thighs. "Can we --?" He pushes his head back into the mattress and groans when Tim pushes against him. "God, *oh*, can we *please*?" 

There's something afire just under Tim's epidermis, nerves and sparks brightening and *tightening*. It resembles anxiety, but --. Warmer. 

Bart's voice, each question mark, sends another stream of fuel through him. The angles and hard, long bones in Bart's body grind and shift underneath him, poke and pull and *hold* him here. He lifts his mouth from Bart's chest and feels the smirk curve over his mouth of its own accord. "Please? Please, what?" 

"*Grife*, stop being -- stop teasing, stop --" Bart's mouth works on empty air. 

"Stop?" Tim leans back four centimeters, then another five, and Bart bangs his head against the mattress. "You --" 

"No." Bart's arms are twitching, his mouth closing and twisting. Any second now, Tim half-expects to see the crackling electricity of the Speed Force jumping from Bart's eyes. Out of his pores. "Keep going, I --" 

Tim thinks there must be some alchemy at work. It must be the improbable juxtaposition of Bart's skin, so *tight* over bone and runner's muscle, against the sheared-off gasps of his and pleas, each question mark inscribing itself across Tim's nerves, burning deeper and deeper. Snaking through his belly, spinning around the base of his spine, spitting pre-come into his briefs. 

Every time he touches Bart, it's like the first time. Like Bart's never felt anything like this, lips over his nipple, biting and soothing, the grip on his wrists, the jagged slide of his dick against Tim's briefs. 

When Tim drops his weight against Bart's dick, hitching his back and rubbing against it, Bart grunts and *yowls*, sucking in breath like water. 

"Should I stop now?" Tim asks and lets Bart's left hand go. It rises, fingers crooked like claws, before pushing through Tim's hair, twisting hard. The pain lights up the back of Tim's eyelids and he counts backward from twenty in Russian before adding, "Bart. Should I --?" 

"*No*, grife, *no*, please, I just --" 

Tim is fairly fast. For a human being, anyway. Bart yelps in surprise, yanks hard on Tim's hair, when Tim releases him and slides off the bed. His knees hit the floor and he looks up. 

Bart's up on one elbow, hair in his electric eyes, skinny legs splayed open. His dick is...Tim closes his eyes and mouths the long tendon in Bart's right thigh. Bart's dick is throbbing, Tim is sure, dark and twitching against cold air. 

"Should I do this?" Tim's neck cracks once as he leans closer, blowing air through his teeth over Bart's balls, downs the humid cleft, up the base of his dick. 

"Oh, *God*, Tim, you don't have --" Bart twists and grunts when Tim tastes the heated, *tense* skin on his shaft. Fingers shove through Tim's hair, nails in his scalp, and --. It's fascinating, really, how much pleasure is conjured up through the simple conjunction of various patches of skin, judicious application of moisture, suction and release. "Yes, please, please --" 

So much pleasure, so readily given, so *available*. Bart tastes a little like Tim's own hand after he jerks off, a little like *Bart* himself, like hot water and fast-drying sweat, and Tim --. Tim tries, very hard, to increase that pleasure. Physiology on this intimate scale is intensely, almost surprisingly, *simple*: Bart's vibrating inside Tim's mouth, vibrating with a near-audible hum, friction heating Tim's palate, making his teeth shiver. His hands paw at Tim's hair, more friction and static electricity. 

Tim is realizing that he's actually fairly good at this. 

For certain definitions of "good", that is, considering just how aroused Bart already was. The really surprising thing is that Tim can feel himself reacting, getting harder, the wet spot on his briefs spreading as he rubs it against the box spring. Pheromones, he supposes, plus the simple sight and sensation of pleasure, are far more powerful than he'd yet given them credit for. 

"Oh, *God*, oh --" Bart *screeches* and shakes for a split-second before his dick pulses harder against Tim's tongue, then shoots, shoots, *fills* Tim's mouth. "Oh, God, I'm sorry, I couldn't --" 

He can't control himself. 

Tim leans back, licking Bart clean, dipping his tongue down to his balls, up the underside of Bart's shaft, over his belly. Seminal fluid is --. Not distasteful. 

"Sorry, sorry, I --. *Sorry* --" Bart sounds like he's almost crying, face buried against the mattress. Tim pushes himself to his feet and wipes his mouth. 

"Bart. Bart." Tim waits for Bart to untwist, to show his face, and then touches Bart's knee. "Did you like that?" 

Bart's dark lashes are darker yet, clumped together, and his face is red with exertion. "Yeah. Yeah, I --" 

"Good." Tim places his knees on either side of Bart's right leg and peels off his briefs. "Would you --" 

He doesn't have to finish. Bart is a *streak* as he sits up, reaches for Tim's dick with his hand and Tim's mouth with his tongue, and --. Effort is well-rewarded. 

He'll be able to work better once this anxious alchemy is taken care of. 

* 

Dick ought to know better than to try to prank-call him. The computer matches the originating number to Roy Harper's private line and the voice-print to Dick before Tim has his hand on the receiver. 

"Dick," Tim says when he picks up the phone. 

"I'm looking for Mr. Freely. Initials I and P -- *shit*." In the background, Roy's laughing hysterically. "Aw, *man*." 

"I was thinking of calling you." Tim checks the bed, but Bart is still sleeping deeply. He might only sleep two hours a night, but those hours count. "Tell me about --" He closes the door to the bedroom and makes his way into the living room. "Sexual relationships. In the community." 

"Why, Timothy Drake! I do declare, I never knew you thought of little old me that way --" 

You have no idea. "Just how drunk are you?" 

Dick barks with laughter and there's a scuffle of grunts and curses. "Sorry, Roy's being -- Roy. I'm not drunk. I'm *comfortable*." 

"Right," Tim says and opens his encrypted email folder. 

"Are you *typing*?" Dick sounds deeply offended. "I'm deeply offended!" 

"Multitasking," Tim says as he deletes Bruce's latest message. "So...?" 

"You want to know about sex, little brother? See, when a vigilante loves another vigilante -- or alien princess, or Amazonian princess, or, hell, his *mentor* -- very, very much --" 

Tim sends the message, then checks his local surveillance feeds. "Put Roy on." 

"No! *I'm* your brother, I'm going to -- Hey!" There's another scuffle, the thump of a body against a wall and the receiver dropping, before Roy comes on the line. "Hey, Paco." 

"Roy." 

"Grayson's blubbering in the corner like a little baby girl. I thought you should know." 

"He is pretty sensitive," Tim says. 

"First rule of sex? Do the opposite of whatever Dick'd do." Roy scratches his -- stubble? Tim's fairly sure that's stubble whispering into the phone. "Trust me, it's a rule that's stood me in *fine* stead over the years. At the very least, try to avoid proposing marriage." 

Tim could mention Cheshire here, but forebears. "Anything else?" 

"Yeah, are you *seriously* shacking up with Wally's baby cousin?" Dick's shouting now in the background and Roy shouts something unintelligible back before adding, "Isn't he, like, *three*? I seem to remember Lian being capable of babysitting him. *Fuck*, Nelly, *stop* --. Sorry, he's biting my leg --" 

"I'll let you two get back to your. Foreplay," Tim says and cuts the connection. 

The phone rings five more times before Tim turns it off and heads back to bed. 

"Shacking up" is the worst term he's heard yet. 

Bart sighs in two octaves when Tim rejoins him. 

* 

Tim wants too much. What he *wants*, what he's capable of taking, what Bart would *let* him take -- it is all too much. 

This need not be an impossible situation, however. He's more than capable of managing something as base as desire. Constraints are not simply necessary, but welcome. Even...healthy. 

His mistake earlier had been to articulate such boundaries to Bart. Bart -- well. Bart has everything, and nothing, to do with the slow creep and rapid wash of guilty need. Everything, because it's *his* body, his Tommy-gun giggles and small, quick hands, his eager urgency, and nothing, because Tim's need, Tim's *constraints*, are his own. 

The first time with Bart here in Blüdhaven -- Tim's not going to let that happen again. He can't afford to break again, can't risk losing it, feeling so *sunken*. 

If need and want had their reign, Bart would be exhausted, bitten and sweaty, fucked full with blown-out pupils and sprained hands. And Tim would be -- not himself. A nightmare, walking. 

It won't happen, no matter how many times Bart promises 'anything' and Tim believes him. 

That's what rules are for. 

* 

When Bart vanishes for classes at Keystone High, Tim settles down to work. His surveillance cameras throughout his sector of Blüdhaven show little of import; the feed on the Kent family farm reveals that Kon, unlike Bart, is skipping school again. The micro-camera, too small for audio, that he installed opposite Cassandra's building was discovered sometime in the last -- he checks the archived footage's timestamps -- four hours and dismantled. 

He turns to the background reports Oracle has assembled on a former associate of the Penguin's. No name yet beyond the usual absurd aliases, but plenty of detail on his various weapons-trading deals and attempts to import the European strain of Soul into North America. 

Tim flags the guy -- he really doesn't want to think of him by his preferred alias, The Agonist, so he codes him as TA -- in his growing database. 

He is deciding the route for tonight's patrol, still pondering his options concerning the Batgirl-surveillance, when the bell rings in the fake apartment below. 

As he checks the door's feed, he realizes that it's already getting dark. He needs to eat and suit up; he doesn't have time for --. 

"Kid Flash," he says into the microphone when the scan is complete. "Change into civvies and I'll let you up." After three seconds, the bell rings again. The monitor shows Bart in an extra-large "I Bled the 'haven" t-shirt over camouflage fatigue pants. The pants don't hide the bulbous -- *clownish* -- bulges of his Kid Flash boots. 

Sighing, Tim activates the elevator concealed in the chimney and unlocks the door. 

"Wow, this really is like a secret hideout!" Bart yells as he careens off the elevator. "Sorry about the costume, I didn't want to waste any time, so I ran. Didn't think, sorry, won't happen again --" 

"Good," Tim says from the kitchen. He has just enough time to put down the sauce pan before Bart's jumping onto the counter and hugging him with one arm. "What are you doing here?" 

"Missed you!" Bart's boots beat a tattoo against the cabinet doors. "Whatcha doing? Making dinner? I already ate, I brought you some of Aunt Joan's pot roast, it's *awesome*, but it looks like you're --" 

"I'm set." Tim turns the flame up under the sauce and leans against the sink, folding his arms. "Bart, you can't --" 

"Can't have two dinners?" Bart asks, grinning around the hunk of garlic bread in his mouth. "Who says? Besides Max, and he's not --" 

"You can't just drop by any time you want," Tim finishes and turns away. He knows that Bart's face is falling. Mentioning Max Mercury *and* getting blown off by Tim all at once would be more than enough to make Bart scowl and sniffle. "It's not --" 

"But I --" Bart slides off the counter and jogs in place. "I *missed* you." 

"I saw you the day before yesterday." 

"Yeah, but --" 

"Bart." Tim lets himself look now, and Bart is not scowling. He's tipping his head to the side, biting his lip. His front teeth are very white, making the pink, plump skin of his lip go white and tense. The veins in Tim's temples throb in warning, but he ignores them, disconcerted for a moment by the sudden wash of heat down his chest and through his hands at the sight of --. What, exactly? Bart, jittering and silently *beseeching*. "Bart, I --. Do the Garricks know where you are?" 

"They know I'm in Blüdhaven, helping Robin with a case," Bart says and glances away. "Your sauce is boiling." 

"Thanks." Tim dumps the sauce over tortellini and kicks out the other chair from the kitchen table. Bart eyes him, momentarily wary, before helping himself to the rest of the pasta and taking a seat. 

"It's *good*!" Bart says when his bowl is clean and Tim's is half-empty. "Did you make it yourself? Is there any more?" 

"No, I didn't, and no, I don't think so." Tim finishes his dinner, makes sure he drains his glass of milk and eats the pre-patrol banana, before attending to the matters at hand. "So you told the Garricks I had a case?" 

"Uh-huh. That I'm helping with." Bart's bangs spill over his forehead as he nods. Then he frowns. "I figured it couldn't be a lie. You having a case, I mean." 

"Just regular patrol," Tim tells him, then adds, "You'd be bored, believe me." 

He rinses off his dishes and heads for the wardrobe. 

"But I could come --" Bart's saying behind him. "I want to come, I want to *help* --" 

The phrase "nipping at my heels" occurs to Tim. 

"No." Tim closes the final latch on his tunic and pauses before pulling on his cape. "Seriously, Bart. No." 

"But *why*?" Bart looks dangerously close to stamping his foot. With those ridiculous yellow boots, it would be -- something to see. "I'm good enough to fight with in Frisco but not here? Because it's, because -- *why*?" 

"Because I don't need the distraction." Tim buckles the cape's gorget and nods his thanks when Bart hands him the mask. 

"I want to help!" 

"I know that," Tim says. "But you can't." He has to force himself to imagine Bart surviving *half an hour* of patrol and surveillance without running like a lunatic down Henrik Avenue. "You'd be bored, believe me." 

"No, you said because I'd distract you." Bart shakes out his hair and strips off the tourist's t-shirt. "Which is it?" 

Tim slicks his hands with gel and pats down his hair. "A little of both, I think." 

"What if I promise not to distract you?" Bart slides under Tim's arm, under the cape, as Tim reaches for the grapple gun on the top shelf, and *presses* his body, full-length, against Tim. "At least not until we're done?" 

"We're not --" Tim pauses when Bart kisses the side of his neck, right above the collar, just below his ear. Warmth splashes through Tim and he breathes out against it. "Negotiating this." 

Bart does learn *very* quickly. His rampage through the library should have impressed that fact on Tim. He's got his arm wrapped around Tim's waist, resting just above the belt, and even through the armor and undershirt, Tim can feel the slow stroke of Bart's fingers. 

"Please, Tim? Please?" Bart makes the words sound --. Exactly, *precisely*, as it does when they're fooling around. 

Tim cannot think straight, not against this proximity. This pressure. He closes his eyes and visualizes the map of Blüdhaven, his planned route, his estimated time at each stop. 

"All right," he says when he opens his eyes. Bart's looking at him with something quiet and almost *flat* in his eyes. "Just tonight." 

When Bart smiles and lets Tim go, Tim has to believe that they've reached an accord. That there isn't a flush of satisfaction crossing Bart's face. 

* 

He will not be shaking Bart any time soon. His -- his body is almost pathetically grateful for that. Tim can feel that in the looseness in his muscles, the confident sweep of his kicks, the fact that he has been sleeping remarkably well the past several days. Physically, then, he is more than content. 

Intellectually, of course, he is all too aware of the possible -- the *probable* and likely -- problems associated with this course of action. With this set of...behaviors. 

Chief among those problems is his own reluctance to acknowledge what might be going on. There are any number of terms for this situation; Tim counts them off mentally, considering and rejecting each term he has heard from others. "Weird friend," in Cass's words; "your little boyfriend," in Cassie's. "Molesting Robin," Bart said once; "homo heroes," Kon said before Bart used Tim's own sparring advice to drop him with a kidney-jab. 

It is not as if his presence in Blüdhaven is packed with activity. Rather, if anything, the sojourn here reminds him of nothing so much as his first months in the Cave. Before he was allowed to suit up, when he tended the Crays and pieced together clues and interrogated Alfred for every scrap of detail about Batman and Robin and Nightwing. 

Tim appreciates -- which is not to say he *sympathizes* with -- Bruce to a greater degree these days. A wide-eyed child flinging himself into a house of (death) grief --. Yes. There is an appreciation, now, for Bruce and what he must have felt in those days that had not been, quite, conceivable earlier. 

Perhaps he should, in light of this, revise the old, baseless sense of *rejection* he sometimes felt then. Always being held at arm's length, able to see the Bat and Bruce himself without being able, allowed, to do anything: that sense wove itself into new nightmares, new *needs*, that it took Tim a long time in the Robin-suit to put behind him. 

Perhaps, in this light, he should be grateful that Bruce did *not* ever come closer than the foot of Tim's bed then. At the very least, he should acknowledge just how difficult it is to ignore that kid, eager and blithe, when he's doing everything short of hurling himself into your lap. 

Then again, Bart *does* hurl himself. Frequently. And, further, Tim would maintain, should he ever be questioned (by whom? Certainly not Bruce, hardly *Dick*), that he had, to a certain, important degree, feigned that -- that *guilelessness*. It comes naturally to Bart, it always has, but Tim cannot remember ever being like that. *Feeling* like that. Not fully. 

* 

Bart's presence, his proximity, need not be --. 

It, he, can be useful. Helpful, even. 

* 

Kid Flash appears in a yellow blur one night as Robin is fending off two steroid-poisoned carjackers. Another night, he's already atop the first building Robin stops at for a hydration break, running in place. 

Finally, the third time Kid Flash "just happens" to be in the city, Robin drags him back to the apartment. 

"Are you going to be doing this often?" he asks as he removes the cape and hangs up his gauntlets. 

Bart appears to be distracted by Tim stripping -- he reaches out to touch Tim's chest as soon as the tunic swings open. Tim grabs his wrist and holds it between them. 

"I --" Bart tries to pull his hand back but stops when Tim raises his eyebrow. "I -- I don't *have* to, but I worry and then I'm running, and it's no trouble, really, as long as I finish my homework and chores first the Garricks say it's okay so long as I do that --" 

Bart's home life is nearly as *false* as Tim's ever was. 

"So that's a 'yes', then," Tim says. 

Bart blinks fast and tries to roll his wrist out of Tim's grasp. "Um --" 

Tim drops Bart's hand and takes three steps over to his computer. He brings up his most current map of Blüdhaven, consolidated from municipal surveys, satellite imaging, and blister-breaking footwork. 

"Look that over," he tells Bart, guiding him to the chair. "Commit it to memory." 

"What are you doing?" Bart bats at Tim's hand as he snaps off the left ear-piece from the Kid Flash costume. "Hey, I need that! For ballast!" 

"Impulse didn't," Tim says without looking up. Before Bart can tell him, again, that he's not Impulse, Tim adds, "Don't worry, you'll get it back. Now memorize that." 

While Bart studies the map, clicking through the eleven scales of detail, Tim dismantles the red wing. He installs a microtransmitter, cannibalized from his subzero Robin costume. On his laptop, he reprograms the transmitter's firmware to allow two-way communication and selects a secure frequency from the Cave's bank of back-up frequencies. 

"Done," Bart says, pushing away from the desk. 

"Good. Here, put this back on." 

Bart weighs the ear-piece in his palm. "It's lighter. What'd you do?" 

Tim pushes back his hair. "If you're going out there, you're going to do what I tell you." 

Bart rolls his eyes as he screws the wing back on. "Well, *duh*." 

* 

He's been having the old, first, nightmare recently. The one where the Bat pierces through Haly's big top, dropping like a hawk after Dick's parents. When they're dead, necks broken and blood spilling from their ears, their mouths and *eyes*, the Bat moves for Dick. 

Dick is the same height as Tim. He screams until blood's spraying from his mouth, until the Bat's got him, wings beating the air. 

After that, Tim is alone in the tent. His parents are -- gone. 

There's only a clown he can't see, laughing. 

* 

"What's going down tonight?" Bart rubs his hands together, the suds from the dish soap flying in every direction. A routine is beginning to assert itself, such that Tim only patrols alone perhaps one night out of every three. "You seem weird. Tense. Tenser than normal, and --" 

Finally, Bart stops talking and takes in the disguise Tim has pulled on. 

"Undercover," Tim says and tips the sunglasses down his nose. 

"Mr. Sarcastic?" Bart shakes his head. "No way! I hated that guy." 

"It's a modification." Tim rolls his shoulders under the sleeveless mesh shirt and tugs at the fingerless gloves. "There's a club over on Stuyvesant --" 

"Such a *jerk*! There's that whole Jungian figure, you know, the trickster and truth-teller, which is what I *guess* he was going for, but --" 

"That's your job?" Tim asks mildly. 

"Nah, just --" Bart throws his hands above his head and frowns. "Mostly, he was just a jerk." 

"Mm." Testing whether the temporary tattoos are drying, Tim turns his arms up to the light. 

"You looked really hot, though, don't get me wrong." 

Tim blinks a few times. "I --?" 

"As him, yeah." Bart's head bobs; Tim decides to reserve the matter that, for Bart, the disguise is easily divisible from the wearer for another time. "Totally hot." 

"Thanks." Tim hands Bart the red velvet pants and silver top he liberated from Cassandra's wardrobe. "Do you --?" 

He has to stop, though, because Bart is grinning Cheshire-wide. "Welcome. Pleasure was, um. All mine! Lots of times!" 

He's had his mouth on Bart's *dick*. His tongue down Bart's throat many times over the years. He should not, at this point, be taken aback by the fact that Bart is a sexual being. 

That Bart has jerked off to this stupid costume. 

"Put those on," Tim says and swallows. "I'll fill you in on the way over." 

They look like any other pair of queer clubkids crowding the basement of the warehouse off Stuyvesant. Tim circles the perimeter of the dance floor while Bart zips around the dancers. He has to admit that they work fairly well together; Bart's memory for faces and ability to eavesdrop on four conversations at once is eminently useful in such a chaotic situation. 

They meet at a couch in the southwest corner every fifteen minutes. Just like any other couple, they pour water down their throats and make out until the music changes. This is straightforward reconnaissance, undercover information-gathering on the Agonist's latest distribution of liquid Anima, so there is no reason at all for Tim to be --. 

*Enjoying* this quite so much. He always enjoys the undercover work; though it lacks the predictable violence of regular patrol, its employment of close observation and consistent playacting more than makes up for that. 

There is, beyond the regular pleasure of going undercover, *Bart*. Dancing like a nutjob until Tim gives in and joins him, tackling Tim onto the creaking couch and kissing him until the lights spin and darken. Fondling the back of Tim's pants just before they part again, slapping his ass, then dancing out of reach, disappearing into the crowd. 

At their final rendezvous, Tim has identified the Agonist's henchman, a tall Slovenian named Igor, but Bart has -- or so Bart tells him, breathlessly, rocking against Tim's groin and sucking on his neck -- scored a full milliliter of Anima. "These kids are really *welcoming*, I had no idea! I've also got seventeen glowsticks and a candy bracelet that's just candy, no dope, that's why the girl let me have it, so you want some?" 

The night is far more successful than Tim had any reason to expect. 

So Tim cranes forward, teeth closing on Bart's wrist and biting off a piece of chalky candy. He lets it melt against his palate while Bart flutters, then collapses, against him, murmuring too fast, too low, for Tim to make out any words. 

Running them back to the apartment, Bart rips the inseam of his pants. He won't stop apologizing until Tim gets one hand on his waist and pushes him against the wall, going down on his knees, tracing the white skin exposed by the rip with his fingers. 

"Tim? Tim, I have to go --" 

Tim gets the secure cell phone from his belt. Untraceable, the number bouncing around various unused ones in the local exchange, it has been useful for calling in tips to the cops; it's even more useful now as he dials the Garricks' home, presses the phone into Bart's hand, and says, "Stay." 

"What?" 

He nudges Bart's legs a little wider apart and licks the sweat and goosebumps on the exposed skin. Doesn't answer, just sucks on the tendon there and half-listens to Bart's stuttering explanation to Mrs. Garrick. 

"Robin's got something -- going down -- and --" Bart's legs tremble through the velvet, their usual heat increasing as Tim works down the fly one-handed. "I'll just go to San Francisco -- tomorrow -- okaythanksgoodnightsleepwell -- *God*, Tim, what're you --?" 

Tim glances up. "You look good." 

It's easier than just about anything to make Bart blush. That doesn't mean, however, that Tim feels anything except *satisfied* when he does. "I --" 

"You make me --" Tim rubs both palms up against the pants' nap and swallows again. Images stream through his mind, everything from Bart under a tree in a blizzard through to tonight, to the lithe body jerking under the strobes, to the likely sight of Bart in his own narrow bed, hand on his dick, thinking about *Mr. Sarcastic*. "You make me want you." 

He thinks his voice might sound angry. Or, if not angry, then -- hoarse, certainly. 

But Bart just gasps. 

He slides, bumping his head and hands, down the wall, until he's sprawled in front of Tim, arms hooked around his neck. His pants are open, his *mouth* is open, open and wet. "God, *really*?" 

Grabbing Bart's hand, pressing it over his crotch, Tim rolls his hips to meet it and kisses Bart as deeply as he can at this angle. 

"Really," Tim says against Bart's mouth, reaching into Bart's pants. Just velvet, the woven underside, before his fingers find hot, damp skin, quivering. "What --" 

Bart tightens his hold on Tim's neck, stroking Tim's dick through the flap on his briefs. "They ruined the line --" 

Bart's talking about his lack of underwear. Tim concentrates on that, lets himself imagine all the sweat that's been here, spangling the dark-gold pubic hair, as he thrusts into Bart's hand. He braces his free hand on the wall next to Bart's head and rocks faster, *strokes* faster, because --. 

There's very little logic here. That's the danger, of course, but also the thrill, the *attraction*, the fact that Bart just *opens* and gives, gives everything he has whenever Tim --. Touches him, so much as smiles at him. 

Bart whimpers when Tim pulls Bart's hand away. "Sssh," Tim says, kissing his eyelids and waiting until Bart opens his eyes and stares dazedly at him. "I want --" 

"Anything." Bart's fervency coils bone-deep inside Tim. "Anything, I swear, I --" 

"I want to. See you come." 

Bart's hips push up and his mouth twists. "I'm --" 

"Touch yourself." Tim pulls back, away, out of reach. He doesn't *have* to sit on his hands, but he tightens them into fists at his sides. "Let me. See." 

There is an odd, acute angle to Bart's smile as he shudders and reaches for himself. His stomach is white, his dick *dark* and wet, his fingers tanned as they wrap around. 

"Don't look away," Tim warns and Bart's shoulders jump. "Don't close your eyes." 

"Right. Okay, I can --" Bart shimmies down until his back is curved, his shoulders hunched and chin planted against his sternum. Eyes locked on Tim's. 

"Regular speed," Tim adds. Just in case, and Bart *moans* in protest, slowing his hand. "Good." 

"T-talk to me?" Bart sucks his lower lip between his teeth and his eyes are giving off their own light. In this dark, empty apartment (not home), they're glowing slightly, copper and gold, as Bart squeezes his dick and rubs his thumb down the slit. "Please, just --" 

"You did really well tonight," Tim says, and realizes he's about to grind his teeth. Every time Bart finishes a downstroke, his stomach clenches. He's going to use half a bottle of spot remover on these pants tomorrow. "You did a great job. You --" 

Bart's breathing is coming almost at *speed*, his hand starting to blur, as he rocks and pumps. 

"Slow down." 

"I can't --" 

"Bart. Slow down." Tim's on his hands and knees now, almost within reach of Bart, getting as close a look as he can. He's testing himself as much as, more than, he's testing Bart, and he's surviving this. Taking pleasure and need, tamping them down, *controlling* them. "Look at me." 

There's a shriek of breath through Bart's teeth and he complies. "I --. Can I? Can I please --" 

He wants to come. Every sign, and more, is there, the glow of his eyes and restless beat of his heels on the floor, his arching back and the sweat running down his chin. 

"No." Tim bites off the word and tightens the muscles in his thighs, stomach, *ass*. Bart grunts and bangs his head against the wall. "I'll do it." 

"Oh, *God*, yes, *please* --" Bart's talking, babbling, and then just *moaning* as Tim flattens his hands on Bart's pelvic bones, as he drops his mouth down. And then, suddenly, predictably but no less *thrillingly*, all he can hear and feel is the buzzing roar of heat of Bart's cock scraping his soft palate, twitching and shaking as he starts coming. 

Tim gulps around the spurt, taking the flow, and works his tongue around Bart's shaft, swallowing it down. 

He'll have Bart sketch the faces of the suspects later. 

* 

He should have foreseen one entirely *unfortunate* consequence of close affiliation with Bart. Of letting Bart in. 

Bart wants to *help*. 

And going undercover, running patrol and stake-outs, are one thing. Having heart-to-hearts and unloading emotional baggage is...unacceptable. 

Despite the fact that the books lining the main room are duplicates from the manor's library, Bart continues to study them. 

"I want to get to know you." 

"They're not --. Mine," Tim says. He did not bring much here from Gotham that wasn't professionally necessary. 

"What's this?" Bart points at a jar tucked between two volumes of forensic lectures on the top shelf. When Tim does not answer, Bart bounces on his toes before jumping for it. His hand flails, misses, and he tries again. A third time. 

Tim deepens, flattens, his voice. "It's not important." 

Ignoring him, Bart jumps again, managing to tip the jar into his hand. "Eww! Okay, I thought it was a cool specimen or something, like a two-headed cat or something, but --." He shakes it. "Eww, *cool*. A bug!" 

"Carnivorous centipede," Tim tells him. He doesn't have to try for toneless this time; it just happens. 

Bart holds the jar in both hands, shaking it, agitating the formaldehyde until the insect appears to move on its own. "What's it for?" 

"It's a symbol of -- power," Tim says. "In Haitian vodoun." 

Bart squints at the centipede. "Haiti...?" 

Tim doesn't reply. Bart's turning the jar over, reading the evidence label affixed to the bottom. He swallows hard, his Adam's apple jumping and bobbing, before looking up to meet Tim's eyes. 

"Haiti," Bart says again. It's not a question. 

Tim shrugs. Every memento is evidence of *something*. 

"I'm, um. I don't really have any --. Anyone. Either." Bart shifts uneasily and sets the jar down on the nearest bookshelf. "Like you, I mean. No family. So if --" 

"I'm not --" Tim walks backward, counting his steps until he can turn into the bathroom. 

Bart, of course, follows him. "I'm just saying --." He stops in the doorway. Tim pulls off his undershirt and shorts, runs the shower until it's hot enough. When he's inside, Bart raises his voice. "It's okay. I mean, it's not okay, really *not*, but I --" 

Tim scrubs down, twice, and lathers his hair. He half-hopes, though there is no precedent for anything like hope, that Bart will give up on trying to talk. After rinsing out the shampoo, he scrubs his legs and arms one more time. His skin is red as the *Flash costume* when he steps out of the shower. 

Bart's sitting on the edge of the sink, handing him a towel. At first, Tim thinks Bart wants to dry him off, but Bart lets him take the towel. 

"I just -- maybe it'd help?" Bart's looking down at his palms, his fingers interlaced. "'cause maybe I --" 

Tim snaps the towel onto the rack. "Don't say you understand." 

"But --" 

Facing Bart, Tim arranges his face into something resembling calm. "Don't." 

Bart's emotional landscape, his entire psychological make-up, is --. Alien. Out of time, out of this world, fostered by an AI and nourished in hyper-reality. 

It cannot be an accident that Tim's closest (friends) allies, the ones he has left, are both constructs. Artificial products of sci-tech rather than anything remotely *normal*. 

He just needs to find a way to square *that* fact with their (Bart's) frequently overwhelming...humanity. 

"Bart, I --" Tim takes another towel and wraps it around his waist. "I like fucking you. Hell, I like *hanging out* with you. But I'm not talking about --" Death, and loss, and all these fucking *ghosts*. "No." 

Over the years, Tim has learned quite a bit about shutting off discussion through carefully clipped obscenities and sharply direct statements. The latter from Bruce, of course, but the former came right from his father. ("Don't you fucking walk away from me, Janet --") 

When he has dressed, he emerges from the bedroom to find the apartment empty. Bart's bag, his extra pair of sneakers and skateboard, even the clean Tupperware container Tim had given him to return to Mrs. Garrick, are all gone. 

Batman's account is hailing him; on the top of the monitor, there is a Flash ring. A sticky-note under the ring reads, in Bart's terrifyingly angular mess of a scrawl, "This was for you. Kept forgetting. See you this weekend." 

* 

He doesn't know if Bart forgives him, forgets about the quarrel, or simply chalks it up to -- what? Adolescently melodramatic grief, perhaps, or the offputtingly chilly, bitchy Robin persona that Tim worked so assiduously (pointlessly) to establish during Young Justice. 

Whatever the reason, that weekend's trip to San Francisco goes -- far more smoothly than Tim expected. Without any emergencies, either threatened or immediately-occurring, Vic sets the team to a rotating sparring schedule. Tim works with Speedy and does not, much, miss Cissie every time he sees a blonde ponytail swinging next to the bow's string. 

Bart's assigned to Raven, apparently to test the vibrational limits of her soul-self, and he's exhausted when they appear at the barbecue for dinner on Saturday. His feet drag, his face is drawn and pale, and he only takes three burgers. Gar squawks in disbelief. 

Tim waves Bart over to the tree he's staked out. "You look like hell." 

Bart picks at his hamburger roll. "Remember falling through Suzy? Try that. All afternoon." 

"Ouch." Tim scans the picnic area; Cassie and Kon are playing keepaway with one of Vic's spare utensil-hand-prostheses, while Mia's curled up on her side around Gar-the-St. Bernard while she talks to Raven. He should keep an eye on Gar, but --. Satisfied that there is, relatively speaking, privacy, Tim adds, "And hi." 

Bart knocks his forehead against Tim's shoulder. "Hi." 

"Thanks for the --" Tim touches his bare ring finger. "But don't you need it?" 

Bart lies on his back, legs over Tim's, and waggles his left hand. His ring glints slightly. "Got it. That one was for you." 

"Oh." Tim feels, vaguely, as if he ought to apologize. "Thank you?" 

"No sweat," Bart says and rolls onto his side, eyes closed. 

Before Tim can decide on an appropriate reply, Bart is asleep. The wind off the bay ruffles his hair, separating it out into finger-wide locks, lifting it against the low sun. Before the light, it looks a lot redder than usual. 

* 

"How did you do it?" he asks Oracle. "Before you got his approval, how did you --" 

The voice modulator chuckles with static and silence. "Updating your dossiers?" 

"Something like that." 

"How did *you*?" she asks. 

Crossing his arms, Tim sits back in his desk chair. "I was just a stupid kid." 

"Out of the mouths..." Oracle pauses and the volume drops. "How do we do anything? That's the real question." 

"I'm not --" Tim drums his fingers on his knee. "This isn't an existential crisis." 

"Of course it's not," she says. "That would be *inefficient*." 

"Hm." 

"Point to me." Oracle is as brisk as ever. In the background, he thinks he can hear a woman shouting. It must be his imagination. "About those woven polymers you asked a certain beetle about --" 

"Send me the schematics," he says. "Samples, if he has them. Robin out." 

* 

"You should -- I want to --" Bart's head thrashes with frustration, his hands opening and closing in separate rhythms. "Why don't you let me?" 

Tim sits back on his knees, hands braced on his thighs. Caught between his legs, his dick *aches*, all the more with every wiggle and reach Bart makes. Bart's mouth is candy-red, slick and sweet, his stomach heaving. "No, I --" 

Can't, and won't, and shouldn't. 

Rather than completing that statement, he steals his right hand up Bart's leg, rubs his knuckles across the taut, soft skin of Bart's balls, and watches Bart fall back -- legs open, hips lifting, distraction displacing desire. 

* 

Tim cannot quite help believing that things are simpler for Bart. Doing his job, being who he is, everything stems from -- what Batman's files call, in ironic quotation-marks, "the Flash legacy". That legacy is genetic -- familial, derived from blood and history. However tangled and complicated that history actually is. 

For Bart, for all the major Flashes, that legacy is a matter of lines of descent. Continuity, simple in its logic. 

Whenever he's running a statistical analysis or waiting for chemical tests to come back, Tim reviews the files on the Flash. On the West-Allens. 

His interest is more than personal, beyond...emotional. In part, his interest is purely *aesthetic*. He has never really liked the bright banana-yellow of the Kid Flash suit, cartoonish and obvious as a bargain box of Crayolas. He likes it even less on Bart. 

Such a costume might make sense in middle America, but it's out of place, loud and *ugly*, in any real city. 

They walked through the woods the night after Jericho disappeared with Raven. Bart made another play for him, trying to trip Tim, make him fall into his arms, and Tim dodged that easily before distracting Bart with questions about the costume change. 

Because those questions had the ulterior motive of distraction, Tim does not trust his recollection of Bart's answers. 

Moreover, their relationship is -- different now. He has every reason to suspect that Bart may be more honest. 

Tonight, they're under the water tower of the former municipal children's orphanage, staking out the Agonist's apartment building. With tracers on his car and his girlfriend's clutch-purse, Tim can spare some attention for Bart. 

"Tell me about --" Tim sweeps his hands down Bart's costume, shoulders to thighs, before stepping back. "Why you changed it." 

Bart's chin goes up fractionally. "Simple. I'm Kid Flash now, so everyone has to --" 

"Respect you." 

At that, Bart narrows his eyes. "Yeah. So?" 

"Especially Wally," Tim says. 

"I don't --" Bart scrubs one hand through his hair. "I don't want to talk about Wally." 

"Right." Tim nods gently. "It's just -- when *he* was Kid Flash, you know, he worked closely with the --. With your grampa." 

Bart's pretending to be busy stretching out his quads, catching one ankle and bending back his leg. "So?" 

But you don't work with him. "And since you want to be --" 

Bart drops his foot and squares his shoulders. "I have to." His fists clench, then release. "I *have* to be --. I have to take this seriously." 

That's the thing, though. Bart may have been reckless, may still be annoying, even sometimes dangerous, in his *eagerness*, but Tim cannot recall an occasion he didn't take helping people seriously. And he's made a serious study of Bart's history. 

Sometimes, especially recently, Tim thinks that having a vigilante-of-vigilantes would not be a bad idea. A Justice League ombudsman, an arbitrator of specifically *heroic* dilemmas and bad situations. Such a figure might have been able to help Dick...not lose it. More immediately pertinent, however, that figure could also beat the chip off Wally West's shoulder when it comes to Bart; it'd be too late, but --. It would be satisfying nonetheless. 

Tim doesn't say any of that. He tilts his head and says, as tonelessly as he can, "Is this about you taking it seriously or having people --" *Wally* (Bruce?). "-- respect you?" 

"Yes." 

"Which?" 

"I don't know!" Bart shouts, then immediately claps his hand over his mouth, but there's no one around. It's gratifying, however, to see that he's growing better at respecting his surroundings. "Sorry." 

"It's okay," Tim says and squeezes Bart's shoulder. The open eyelets on the Kid Flash costume are problematic. Maybe they worked when they only exposed Wally's eyes -- many people have blue eyes, after all -- but they show far too much of Bart. 

"Why are you smiling?" Bart twists Tim's arm until it's clutched between their chests and peers at Tim. "What's so funny?" 

"Nothing. Sometimes, I look at this suit and --" Tim rolls his left shoulder to show the yellow interior of the cape. "You know where this came from, right? The red, green, and yellow?" 

Bart grins, fast and *sweet*. "Apparently, the Gotham City ecosystem favors a longstanding symbiotic affinity between bats and robins that's not seen anywhere else." 

Tim checks his wrist-monitor; still no movement inside the Agonist's place. "Nightwing was in the circus. Before...before. This was his costume." 

"Oh." Bart's cocking his head now; it's gratifying as it ever is to feel his attention focusing like this on Tim. "So what's a robin got to do with anything?" 

"He was. Robin." Tim feels a creeping vertigo, in his shoulder-blades and down his calves, but lets it go. "Nickname." 

Bart's eyes shine a little as he considers that. His patience is getting better all the time. "That's weird. It's -- it's not a job title, then." 

Tim drops his left shoulder and steps out from beneath the water tower. The stake-out's a bust. "It is now." 

Bart's already on the edge of the roof, coiling up the cable on the supplemental audio. "Being somebody else, you mean?" 

"Yeah." Tim knocks Bart's shoulder lightly as he shoots the grapple line. "Race you back." 

In place of the vertigo, he feels the satisfying *quiet* of a decision made. 

* 

Later that week, Tim dreams again of the Bat at the circus and wakes to --. Bart, stroking his hip and murmuring in his sleep. 

Tim hates his own subconscious sometimes. It's entirely *obvious* that he's had the dream because he is avoiding Bruce's pages and phone messages. 

He blinks against the darkness. For a moment, silhouetted in the doorway, he thinks he sees one of Bart's scouts, small and golden. He blinks again, but sees only the dark. 

The figure persists behind his lids, colors reversed, gold gone to deep purplish-green. 

He'll call Bruce in the morning. Just now, Bart's fingers are working elliptical figures up Tim's back. 

* 

"He needs to work with the speed," Tim tells Dick. "Not give into it." 

Gripping the rings, Bart swings back and forth, legs churning the air like egg-beaters. "I can do that!" 

Dick raises his eyebrow and Tim smiles tightly. "So show Nightwing." 

He leaves them in the training room, going back upstairs to get some work done. He keeps the feed from the training room minimized in a corner on his monitor, checking it every so often. Without audio, Dick and Bart resemble a slapstick silent movie, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, pushing each other, wrestling, sparring. 

He hasn't trained with Dick for a long time. 

Three hours later, Bart drags himself to the shower, muttering about mean old heroes and their crazy standards. Dick waits until the water's running, then spins Tim's chair around. 

"Is he good to you?" Dick leans in, the scent of his sweat rolling like high tide over Tim. 

"Jesus. What?" Tim concentrates on keeping his hands relaxed. 

"You heard me." Dick, of course, is more concerned with emotional states than the matter at hand. Than training. "I want to know if he treats you --" 

"I'm fine," Tim says. "Did he give you cause for concern?" 

Dick steps back and pushes both hands through his hair. "Nah. It's obvious -- kind of *crazily* obvious -- he's all about you. Wouldn't shut up with the Timmy-questions, so I made him do Shiva's silent wing chun." 

"Shiva doesn't have..." 

Dick grins. "He doesn't know that." 

"Good move." Tim goes to the kitchen to get Dick some water. Dick sidles past him, knocking his shoulder into Tim's, boxing him into the corner between the refrigerator and stove. "Tim. What exactly are you *doing* here?" 

If he closed his eyes, Tim believes he could smell Bart on Dick. He levels his gaze instead. "What do you mean?" 

With a roll of his torso, Dick pushes him tighter into the corner. "What. Do you think. You're doing here?" 

He can't be surprised by Dick's...emotional acumen. Not when it comes to anyone not himself. Tim blinks once. "Did Bruce ever touch you?" 

"Christ!" Dick's face twists, hard, like something yanked it. "Where'd that come --?" 

"It's fairly clear to me," Tim says and takes a breath. "*Now*, anyway, that he and Jason --" 

"*Obvious*?" Spittle flies from Dick's wide, flexible mouth. 

"Afterward, he wasn't --. He acted more like someone heartbroken." Than a father. A son. 

"Heartbroken?" Dick grabs Tim's chin, bounces his head against the wall. Tim *lets* Dick shake him as his eyes shift fast, back and forth. "And, what? You'd know all about that?" 

"Yes." The hold vanishes. Tim slips under Dick's arm, slips free. "I'm curious if Jason was. Unique. If you ever got --" 

"*Fucked*?" The fridge rattles, bottles inside clanking as they fall, under Dick's fist. 

"In a word, yes," Tim says. 

Dick sags against the refrigerator, head down, shoulders flexing and falling. 

"At any rate," Tim adds from the door. "Thanks for helping. Us." 

* 

Kon has been arguing, without using *quite* the same terms, that meaning is genetic. He's evil because he has Luthor's genes inside him; Clark's contrasting, beautiful, *alien* DNA does not, apparently, count, not in the face of evil. Unassailable -- "*Inside* me, man!" -- and inescapable. 

Tim suspects that Bart would agree. Not about the specifically evil qualities -- Bart's faith in (his friends) humanity is far too sunny for *that* -- but about the general logic of the argument. Legacy is genetic, becomes destiny; he will be the Flash not just because he runs so fast, but because of his father and mother, his grandparents. 

Once upon a time, Tim shared that logic. He knows now, however, that Robin has no such line of descent -- Dick was the first *and* last for whom the suit meant something before Batman. The line of logic for Robin is jagged, gappy, broken by trauma and death, firing and abandonment. It disappears, passes laterally, doubles back. 

Logic and meaning *can* pass downward, simply, through the generations. Kon and Bart are evidence of that. 

Or they can be -- intentional, assumed, given their force purposely. 

Jason died and *someone* had to be Robin. Tim was naive enough -- then -- to believe that it had to be Dick. That was the simplicity of generational logic. 

He got over it. Dick *forced* him to get over it. 

That was the first trauma. 

* 

Alfred has started bringing more food than usual, almost as if Tim were...eating for two. 

He snorts and opens the package. 

When it's solid, the dark purple-maroon borrowed from the Impulse costume is as dark as a bruise. Nearly as dark as Robin's own cape. The fabric is far more *slithery* than Robin's costume, spun from much more complicated molecules, several of which WayneTech scientists have yet to name. 

"What's that?" Bart returns as if on cue, lugging another box of food. "Your uncle or whoever he is, is the *nicest* guy, you know that? He remembers my grampa! He calls me 'Master Bartholomew', makes me feel all *Regency*, like an Austen hero or something and..." 

It took Alfred well over a year to call Stephanie 'Mistress', now that Tim thinks about it. 

"This," Tim says and trades the new costume for the box in Bart's arms, "is --" He swallows against his suddenly dry throat and tries to parse what he wants to say. "It's yours. If you want it." 

Bart shakes out the costume, holding it up to the light, and Tim turns around in order to unpack the box. Because sorting tins of soup and Italian tuna is *very* pressing business. 

"Uh --" Bart clears his throat and Tim takes a moment to turn around. 

It looks better than he had allowed himself to expect. The light quilted armor thickens Bart's shoulders and hips just enough, while the leggings are every bit as --. They won't incur any wind-drag. 

"Here --" Tim hands Bart the oval goggles, the lenses tinted to compensate for red-shift, capable of switching to night-vision. "I thought. If you're going to be --. On these streets --" He reserves some pride at not calling them "my" streets. "You need something more. Suitable." 

Bart grins, *beams*, as he spins around and Tim prepares to grin back, but when Bart whirls to a stop, he --. His mouth is tilted, angular, somehow *knowing*. Tim does not take the step back he would like to. 

"Do I get a code-name, too?" Bart asks, adjusting the buckle on the goggles' strap. 

"I --." Tim squints to make out the lightning bolt woven down the front of the jersey. "I thought 'Mayfly'." 

Bart's lips form the syllables, a few times, but he's silent. 

"It was that or --" Tim coughs, then hears himself laugh. "'Duckling'." 

Bart smoothes his palms down his front, thumbs tracing the lightning bolt, the sound of skin on fabric *susurrant*, onomatopoetic. It resonates along Tim's spine, like his vertebrae form a single tuning fork. "Drake, right? Middle and Old English for mayfly, order Ephemeroptera, from the Latin *draco*." 

Tim realizes that most people, and *all* normal people, would not blush because of a...friend's (lover's) etymological acumen. And yet his cheeks, his palms, *his mouth*, all heat quickly. 

"Or the Old High German for a male duck." Bart *does* grin now as he closes the distance between them. "I think I like the bug one better than something, um." 

"Infantile?" Tim asks faintly and fights to retain his balance. Fortunately, he's leaning against the counter, and Bart's bracing his hands on either side of Tim's hips. 

"Yeah." Bart's breath spills warm, slow, over Tim's forehead. "Do --. Do robins eat bugs?" 

Tim's balance is fine now, but his knees bend slightly nonetheless, the better to bring his mouth against Bart's throat. The zipper on Mayfly's jersey opens down to his waist, and Tim tugs it halfway there. "Probably. You're the one with the eidetic memory, though." 

Bart's hands slide in tandem up Tim's sides, palming his ribs, pulling him away from the counter. "You make me feel dumb *every* day." 

"Oh, I --" 

Bart shakes him lightly and nips down on Tim's mouth. "That's a compliment." 

It's a strange sort of --. Tim tips back his head, just far enough to take in Bart, goggles and all, dark jersey split open over his pale, narrow chest. 

"It suits you," Tim says. "It's --" 

It *is* the Impulse maroon, but solidified. Over Bart's leaner, taller body, seen in the ruddy early-evening light, the color is -- 

An Englishman would call it "aubergine". 

Urban shadows are never black, but diffused shades of filtered light, remnants of neon, reflections off concrete. This is a city color, as the crayon yellow never could be. This is *appropriate*, and Bart really does --. 

"Bart --" Tim's nails rake down the open V on his chest. "Bart --" 

"Anything," he replies. 

Tim shivers. "Fast learner." 

Bart's mouth opens against his, takes in Tim's darting, anxious tongue and *sucks* it for a moment. "Good teacher." 

* 

Dick had managed, Tim can see, to instill a certain -- *gravity* in Bart. His kicks are better controlled, able to reach farther and sweep higher, than ever before. 

Impulse had always ever been a caricature of Bart's...energy. Mayfly moves with a certainty, an efficiency, that would be unimaginable if Tim were not here, watching. 

Admiring. 

* 

Bart is dressing for school the next morning when the private door alarm sounds. Tim glances at the security system as its retinal scan identify "Wayne, Bruce". He turns off the stove. 

"Stay where you are," he calls over his shoulder, down the hall to Bart. 

Hangers clatter in the closet and Bart yells back, "Why?" 

"Because I said so." 

"Why?" 

"Bart, swear to --" 

Tim stops in the middle of the living room. His hair hasn't yet been combed, he's wearing his night-shirt over a pair of Bart's khakis, and --. He should have expected this visit. 

He had expected a summons to the Cave. 

Bruce steps off the elevator, dressed in businessman's casual. It *is* Friday. His eyes flicker over Tim as he moves toward the computer console. 

That's mine, Tim would say. If he were petulant, if Bruce was not doing the Batman's shoulder-loom. Instead, he watches Bruce slide a CD into the secure drive and open Tim's file directories. 

"I expect you know why I'm here." Bruce does not turn around. And that voice in the back of Tim's head, the one demanding to know 'would it *kill* the man to ask a question?', that voice has to belong to Dick. 

"You'd like to ascertain my --." Tim clears his throat and joins Bruce at the desk. "Whether I've been compromised." 

"Mm." 

"I have not." 

Bruce's hand, huge knuckles and scars beneath dark hair, dwarfs the optical mouse. "You're employing an unauthorized --" He clicks the first file on the disk and brings up grainy footage of Mayfly on the street last night, tying up a gang of amateur arsonists. "Operative." 

Tim should not be taken aback at Mayfly's resemblance to, of all people, *Catwoman*. But the goggles, the O-ring on the jersey's zipper, the heavy-tread boots: The influence is fairly clear. 

"I'm accepting some help, yes," he says after a moment. 

"Batgirl --" 

Was that why he'd sent Cassandra after Tim to Blüdhaven? Was Bruce attempting, however fumblingly, however goddamn *obliviously*, to play matchmaker? 

Bruce would rather lose his best operative, his closest ally, than attempt anything like --. Than to *comfort* Tim. 

Of course, Tim has been able to ignore Cass, whereas a hug would precipitate homicide. 

He suppresses the twitch in his cheek. "Batgirl is not. Copacetic with my mission." 

Bruce's eyebrow rises. "Which is?" 

Batman needs a Robin. "The same as it has ever been." 

Bruce does not quite hum under his breath, but there's the suggestion of -- *consideration* in his hesitation over the next file. "And this?" 

The footage switches to them in the club on Stuyvesant that night. Bart is straddling Tim's thigh, grinding down while Tim's painted fingernails clasp and spread his ass. Evidence, Tim thinks, but of what? Through Bruce's eyes, what is --. Bruce freezes the footage and clicks the mouse three times until the image of their faces, wet with sweat and spit, enlarged, fills the screen. 

But Robin needs. Someone else. 

"That," Tim says and presses his fingertips against the edge of the desk, "would be another form. Of the help I mentioned." 

Bruce turns to face him. His eyes are intent and blank all at once; Tim doubts whether he will, ever, master his own expressions as well as Bruce has. 

"Two high-ranking distributors were busted as a result of that undercover work," Tim adds. "Captain Rohrbach can confirm." 

"Unnecessary." Bruce's right hand lifts for a moment, and he looks at it as if he doesn't recognize it. "That will be --. Unnecessary." 

"Ah," Tim says. As he starts to mirror Bruce's gesture -- the desk between them might as well be the Gulf of Mexico, but there is a value in *trying* to reach out -- Bart's sockfeet pound and slip down the hall. 

"Wow, check us out! Hey, can I have that? Like a print-out or something?" Bart skids to a stop, pointing at the screen. "Please?" 

It *is* evidence of something, after all. 

"Also, why are you holding hands with playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne? Hi, Mr. Wayne! I'm --" Bart shakes his head. "Not important right now! Tim, turn on the news, that's what I needed to tell you --" 

"Yes." With his free hand, Bruce extracts a folded copy of the Gotham Gazette from his jacket pocket. "That's the other thing you need to address." 

A corpse, dressed in an eerily accurate replica of the Robin suit, is splayed out in the photo over the fold. 

Death only *looks* peaceful; Tim knows that now. But this dead Robin looks nearly serene in his puddle of blood, brain matter, and cape. 

"Shit," he breathes and ignores Bruce's unspoken chiding against vulgar language. "Shit." 

"Are you Robin's source of funding?" Bart is asking Bruce, circling him, doing everything but *tug on his sleeve*. "You're way bigger than I thought! Like Hulk Hogan big, wow --" 

"Former pro westler," Tim says without taking his eyes from the photo. He knows Bruce is shooting him a look, a question. "Bart, could you leave us. Alone?" 

Months away from the Cave, and Tim can still sense (will always sense) when Bruce shifts his weight. He glances up to see Bart backing away from Bruce, hand over his mouth. 

"Batman?" he whispers. 

Bart goes still, eyes widened and glassy, when Bruce lifts his chin and says, "Mayfly." 

The name is a confirmation, an *acknowledgement*, of -- something. Tim has some trouble swallowing. 

Unasked questions *buzz* through Bart as Bruce takes his leave. Tim does his best to ignore them. 

Throughout the morning, after Bruce leaves and Tim calls Bart in sick to Keystone High, he cannot quite look away from the front-page photo. That dead Robin looks nothing (everything) like him; the photo is not a mirror, not a premonition, but disturbing nonetheless. Bart's freaked out, Bruce advises, predictably, discretion (though discretion does not in any way account for the bandage half-visible through his dress shirt), and Tim is. 

Rather amused on an abstract level, though he has to hide that, thoroughly revolted, and faintly *confused*. 

"I know it's not you, because you're right here, but it's *freaky*, how are you not getting that?" Bart orbits the sitting area, alighting briefly on the edges of furniture only to jump back up immediately and *move* some more. 

His resemblance to Dick is slight, but -- persuasive. 

Tim finishes reading Batman's preliminary notes on the case and slips them back into the envelope, then slips the envelope into the newspaper. 

The Inquisitor noted the appearance of a Girl Wonder, but no papers covered her...absence. 

"It's just *wrong* and freaky and --." Bart waves his hands, shakes his head, blurs out into an anxious smear. "Argh!" 

"It's been done," Tim says dully. With his index finger, he traces the dead Robin's diamond mask. 

"Huh? Like a copycat killer? Is that what your files say? Is that a *lead*?" Bart drops onto the couch, knee first, and leans over the paper. "Do the cops know yet? You should tell them." 

"No. I mean -- Robin's died before. Real Robins, really dead." 

"Oh. *Oh*." Bart's left hand creeps over the back of the couch, touches Tim's shoulder lightly, but Bart himself looks -- away. "Your...brother? Sister, too." 

"Jesus." Without dislodging Bart's wary touch, Tim rubs both hands over his face. "Both, neither --" 

"Oh. Um --" Bart pokes him. "Explain?" 

Tim puts his head against the back of the couch. "They're not my -- siblings. We weren't related. Like that." 

Bart *still*, despite everything, probably believes that Batman is his father. 

Tim allows himself to wonder briefly who this kid's parents are. Were. 

* 

All things considered, he much prefers any form of mediated communication -- radio, email, Oracle's satellite-bounced voice -- to anything face-to-face. 

In the last several weeks, however, he appears to have lost the ability to enforce those preferences. Bart can bypass the security systems and just *vibrate* into the building; Dick and Bruce and Alfred have been arriving at his door like it's the most natural thing in the world. 

And now Tim is back in Gotham, GCPD headquarters shrinking behind him as he flies. Bart meets him on the roof of the old opera house; he has changed out of Kid Flash's canary costume, back into the shadows and bruises of Mayfly. 

"They asked *a lot* of questions," he tells Tim. "Who are you, where do you live, how long have we known you --" 

Tim nods. "What did you tell them?" 

Bart shoves the goggles up onto his forehead and looks around. "Is there somewhere we can go?" 

His father's apartment was sold two weeks ago; one bank account balance has swollen commensurately. "Just the Bat-Cave." 

"God, no!" Bart's shoulders draw in, twitch, and -- it feels like far too long and all too soon before he's touching Tim's arm. His shoulder, his face, tracing the line of Tim's jaw. "I'll run us home, if that's okay?" 

The wind cuts cold and *thoroughly* down Tim's back as Bart runs parallel to the highway. Knives and speed, his arms wrapped around Bart's neck, sweat cold on his cheeks, sharper than anything, stinging his eyes beneath the mask. 

In the apartment, Bart paces erratically, stealing quick glances at Tim, rubbing his hands together, toying with the zipper on the Mayfly jersey. His eyes glow a little, his mouth shifts and twists in a variety of angles. 

"What?" Tim demands finally. 

"Glad you're --" Bart rocks on his heels. "Just glad you're not dead." 

"Heh." The warmer air in here hurts Tim's lungs slightly. Too warm, too humid. "C'mere." 

He could take the cold running through him, wind it tighter, tell Bart -- tell him what to do. He *needs* to watch and direct, make everything happen, occur at his behest. It's -- addictive. 

Bart's on his knees, arms around Tim's waist, looking up at him with wide eyes, and the perfect match between expectation and need should make him reel. 

"You're not --" Bart's fingers tug at Tim's tights, scrape his cold skin. "So *glad* and you're --" 

He palms the back of Bart's head, urges him upward. 

He can't, quite, find the right words. But Bart's giving him that look, simultaneously urgent and considering, just before his chin tilts and he kisses Tim. 

It's always hungry, always *new*, the wet swooping pressure of Bart's mouth. Away from it, unkissed, Tim cannot decide whether it is frightening for its childish avidity or --. Consoling, nostalgically so. 

*Within* the kiss, there's no such space for deliberation. 

Tim's arm is hooked around Bart's neck, hand splayed open on his spine as Bart pushes him -- forward. Backward, down the short hall, floorboards skimming, hot sparking friction, under his feet. Bart's sharp knee between his thighs, nothing like a rudder, *propelling* him back until he bounces onto the bed. 

"You --. Just *let* me, *please*?" Bart's standing over him, blurring in place, but talking at normal speed, so the words don't match, can't match, his face, stuttering out. 

Tim's tights are back in the living room, his tunic is somewhere in the hall, and Bart's hands are all over him, whirring, pinching, stripping. 

There are rules. Tim remembers there are rules, but he's --. Naked save for the jock and Bart's fingers are sliding through Tim's sweat, vibrating, making tendrils of steam curl upward. He can't remember the rules. There are so many, too many, there's something about --. 

He's not allowed to feel. "Make it --." He buries his face in Bart's hair, sucks on the back of his ear. "Faster. Just --" 

"I won't hurt you --" Bart says and Tim knows that Bart believes that. "Just. Faster, okay, let me try --" 

All theories, logical systems, procedures and -- yes. Sets of *rules* -- are houses of cards. Shivering in the breeze, and this is gale-force, Bart's hands on his hips, turning him over, palms sliding up the back of Tim's thighs. Covering, cupping, his buttocks and *spreading*. 

There's a fast, wet mouth sliding down Tim's back, suction at speed, thumbs in his cleft spreading him wide. Opening him and Tim hides his face, his eyes, in his arm, against the mattress. 

The first lick is slow. Slow enough that Tim bucks and twists at the almost-pain. 

Bart's knees are bracketing his own. He pants against Tim's back. "I want to --. *Tim*. Let me make you come, I want to try, please. Let me --" 

Tim tastes spit and fabric softener when he bites the sheet. "T-tell me. Tell me what you're doing." 

He can't see. He -- 

The kiss down his crack is quicker this time, warmer, vibrating with Bart's giggle. "You want me to report?" 

"Report." Tim arches, *shoves* backward, at the word, feeling something (not real) incorporeal loosen. "Yes." 

\-- won't see, will feel, will sink and blow away. 

"I'm licking your *ass*," Bart says in broken wonder, hoarse need, and does it some more, twisting his tongue and painting spirals up and down and *around* until Tim's hips are rocking with the rhythm. He feels his back bow, ass lift and chest grind down, loses everything but the rapid, slick heat. Right...*there*, deeper and wider with every lick. "I'm --. *God*, Tim, I'm *sucking* on it and it's really *good* --" 

Two bony fingers knock against his dick and Tim's throat cracks open. He might be saying words. 

"You're so *hard*, it's making you --" Bart's voice stops, the moist pressure returns, doubling, licking and thrumming somewhere *inside*. High, stuttery breaths when Bart lifts his head again and strokes Tim's dick. "Really hard, I think you like this, I'm *glad* you like this, you're so --" He twists, squeezes, the head and giggles again. "Wet. Really wet and --" 

"More. Faster, Bart --" Behind Tim's eyelids, he sees cartwheeling fireworks, spirals and corkscrews that explode and flower as Bart sucks and licks. They jolt and break apart as his hips rock, brighten inexorably, don't fade so much as split and enlarge. 

"I'm back!" Bart says. Tim didn't know he was gone, but he hears the bed move, and he's still rocking, pushing his dick into the mattress, spreading his legs and lifting, and --. He thinks he might have come. "It's so *red*, you're all red and wet and -- I'm going to, I want to --" 

"Do it," Tim tells him. *Anything*, it can be anything, it's always everything, always chaotic and new if Bart's present. Bart gulps, Tim's sure he hears that, and then he can't hear anything for a long, *fiery* moment when something harder than a tongue nudges at his hole. 

His hole is miles-wide. Acreage, open and needy, and his mouth is, too, sucking on the sheet, teeth tearing at it. 

"Finger," Bart grits out. "*Fuck*, Tim, I want --." There's another spin of vertigo and Tim's face is cold suddenly as Bart flips him onto his back. Arm hooked under Tim's knees, other hand on his shoulder: Tim taught him that flip and he's bouncing, *grunting*, as Bart gets close and his finger, hot and hard and *wet*, prods at his hole again. "Does that feel good? Am I -- Is this right?" 

"It's --" Tim opens his eyes. His legs. "Yes." 

At speed, time is irrelevant. 

One, and then two, vibrating fingers whose hum leaps from Bart into Tim, deeper and wider, until he's nearly aloft, the currents running through him while he's still, held and *fucked*, speed rushing past and through. Streams of light as Bart fucks him faster, the motion passing through him, catching him up and --. 

He isn't swept *away*. He's swept and motionless all at once, Bart's eyes like taillights on his own, anchors and lighthouses in the storm. Bart's still talking, still reporting (good partner, thorough reports), but it's all -- anything, everything -- torrents of song and light. He watches Bart's face change, and change again, glowing and blurring, captivated, all because *he* is watching-feeling-touching *Tim* and it's --. 

Everything. Terrifying descents and vertiginous ascents; it occurs to Tim that he's not going to break. Not blow away, not scatter. 

There needs to be a whole, first, in order *to* break. 

And the (second) orgasm hits as an afterthought, an aftershock, Tim shouts and shakes as Bart presses on, presses and fucks and pets him, pulls him up into an awkward embrace, kissing his face and neck with a mouth that has --. 

Tasted, and precipitated. All of this. 

"You...?" Tim's mouth works wrong, his jaw sore, as he tries to reach for Bart's dick. 

Bart's laughter floods out. "Taken care of." 

* 

He didn't bring much of his own to Blüdhaven. The city is territory, mapped and patrolled, existed in. It is not -- home. 

Bart has found everything of Tim's in the apartment already. Wearing his Mayfly suit, in fact, he has nearly *doubled* what is Tim's there. Here. 

When they finish the night's patrol, Tim points them southwest. He ignores Bart's questions, because he doesn't have anything to say in answer. Outside the gates, he hands Bart some civilian clothes, and starts to take out his own. 

"Wait," Bart says and catches Tim's hand. He taps Tim's knuckle right above the Flash ring. "Try that." 

Morning's still coming up; he has the time to indulge Bart. Tim depresses the lightning bolt and jerks away when a full set of civvies, golf shirt and cords, streams out of the ring. He's seen the red Flash suit, Bart's two costumes, do the same thing any number of times, but this is --. 

"What is this?" 

"It's your present!" Bart scoops the clothes off the ground and shoves them into Tim's arms. "Get it? Your costume is..." 

"Tim?" 

"Yeah!" Bart runs around him, stripping off the Robin suit, rolling it up, spraying something that smells like clover and honey over it until it's the size of a pellet. "My grampa invented this. He gave rings to *his* friends, too." 

"Handy," Tim says, his chest a little hollow as he zips up the pants. "Thank you." 

Bart's grin is bright in the morning dusk. He kisses Tim quickly before stepping back. "You're welcome." 

Tim squares his shoulders as they enter the grounds. He walks slightly ahead of Bart up the long, curving drive. 

Logic is an abstract ideal, and while facts ever proliferate, knowledge is --. Contingent. 

You work with what you've got. He needs to tell Kon that, needs to make him *believe* that. 

Bart could help with that, actually. 

Outside the big main doors, Bart slips his hand into Tim's and Tim --. Doesn't let go, as they move inside, down the hall, past reception, into the solarium. 

"She's pretty," Bart whispers. It's a fact, but it means something else, something Tim will think about later. 

Right now, he clears his throat gently. "Dana, there's someone I want you to meet." 

Face-to-face, divisions ruptured and erased, and he can't, quite, smile, not yet, as Bart touches her hand. "Hi there!" 


End file.
